Choose One from Column A, B, or C

I guess I could have labeled this post as "A Public Service Announcement" but decided on the A,B,C theme since I wanted to draw readers attention to three totally unrelated but I thought interesting posts that came across my CRT this past week.

Since I stole GL Hoffman's gruzzle graphic (I know, I don't know what that means either, but that's what he calls them) so I guess I'll start there.

I, along with a cast of thousands, have been following GL for quite a while. He is, as those who read his What Would Day Say blog a very clever and insightful guy. In this particular post, I thought he demonstrated both of those traits very well as he gave us his take on the recent Beer Summit.

Not only is the visual pretty neat, what he had to say about it all was equally powerful I thought, so if you didn't happen to catch it, you can check it out here.

Next on the list was a post on ERE by Matthew Charney entitled Bullet Point to the Head which I am still laughing at. Given the well-known and often not displaced frustration that candidates have with the lack of communication with the recruiting world, Charney provides some "insights" that are not only very funny but since most humor comes from truth exaggerated some "learnings" that might help relieve some of that frustration.

You can read it here, but for sure you need to be sitting down otherwise you may fall down laughing.

Finally, if you have not been following John Sumser's latest venture for RecruitingBlogs.com in which he is attempting to ID those who he and/or others feel are the top 100 influencers in HR and Recruiting it's a fun pass time to watch the list grow.

It is sort of like those lists that ESPN or SI put together every once in the while of the top 100 pros of all time in whatever sport you want to name. The lists, of course, are subjective but so far as we know not influenced by direct bribes, and when folks like Peter Clayton are on the list, it helps to provide comfort that it's hard to argue with the choices made especially if you happen to agree with them.

As far as I can tell, at this writing, the list is up to 20 or so and who knows who the other 80 will be, but it is the sort of thing when you are old enough to probably recognize most of the names that appear you feel "qualified" to say to yourself, "Yeah, I buy that!" or "How the hell do you suppose he/she made the list?" That's what makes them fun, but be that as it may, I was happy to see Peter's name.

In my book, he certainly deserved the recognition along with many of the other names of folks that I have come to know at some level over the years and whose work I respect as well, including of course John himself.

On the other hand, I don't know where they got Peter's picture from, but I am guessing from his high school yearbook. [Just kidding Peter.]

The Value of Networks

Kevin Wheeler has another of his insightful posts on ERE today which caught my attention for a couple of reasons: (1) his name was attached to it, and (2) he was talking about what brings real value to a network, the latter, of course, being not only close to my heart, but part of what we feel is a major part of our DNA here at ExecuNet.

Certainly the entire article is worth reading for sure, but as you might well have guessed already, one of the key points he makes is that that all too often people (and in this case he is talking about recruiters, but the concept applies equally as well to anyone no matter what their profession) is that like anything else in life, it really is far more about quality than quantity, or as he puts it in part:

"They judge themselves and others as "successful" by how many people are in their network."

Surprise, surprise? Not!

Of course Kevin is right as I would guess most readers know based on their own life experiences, irrespective of their professional lives.

What continues to amaze me however, even after all these years is that even though I think most people understand this on an intellectual level, there are still those who feel that collecting names electronically or physically is as Kevin says about quantity not quality. In some cases it starts to sound like the LinkedIn Olympics.

This, of course, is not to say that LI is not a valuable resource, it most certainly is, but the gathering of thousands of names from the 15 million profiles or whatever it is these days be it on LI or one of the other "social networks" does not translate to a network that is really meaningful on a personal level.

When it comes to the care and feeding of a real network and most especially one which has to do with helping to maintain or advance and enhance one's professional career, it's not about numbers as such, it's about relationships that have been built over time so that when your name comes up, the words that flash across people's minds are descriptors such as: trust, respect, insightful, helpful, bright, responsive, and supportive and/or a long list of other adjectives that any of us could add.

So, if you are going to use numbers as a metric in terms of your network, I would count words, not names.